‘Elsewhere’ is here. The Politics of Space in Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children

This article focuses on Seven Jewish Children (2009), by British dramatist Caryl Churchill. The piece, written and staged in a few weeks as a reaction to Israeli military intervention in the Gaza strip, was published on The Guardian with free license to perform for whoever guaranteed a collection for Medical Aid For Palestinians. Consequently, it has been staged worldwide, by both professional and amateur companies, in traditional theatres and other performing spaces, in the original language as well as in translation. Its sparse dramaturgy sketches out a symbolic space, especially through its use of deictic elements such as adverbs of place; in turn, such elements enter in a mutual relationship with the different material location of each performance, where new audiences are invited to place themselves both physically and politically. By conjoining an analysis of the playtext with the performance devised in an art gallery by ROOMS Production in 2009, this contribution discusses Seven Jewish Children as a significant instance of the way contemporary theatre engages with the international politics of space and place.